Wednesday, 5 December 2012

We are having first snow of the season and it's snowing real thick today. Whole place is covered in snow, it looks beautiful and serene and it's so Christmassy. I like the slow build up of the Christmas mood in here and the snow just makes it perfect. Here is a warm recipe for the cold winter season.

Have
you joined my Facebook page yet? It is the places that I hold my foodie
discussions, interact with the readers, post recipes and updates. It’s a
formal page to hold informal discussions and foodie talks and to get to know the
readers suggestions, opinions and more. Couple of weeks back we had a
discussion about what the readers would like to see on the blog and most of them came
with the option of Malabar Food. In spite of dishing out Malabar food regularly
at home, I rarely post them in here or even draft the recipe down.

Most
Malabar recipes are time consuming, very elaborated, and lot of typing as
well which probably would be the reason I really don’t include the food that I
grew up devouring every day. I almost feel lethargic when it comes to typing
very long recipes and that is one reason you tend to see fewer Malabar posts.
Some of the recipes would want to have pictorial representation as well as the
method would be a bit too complicated for the novice cooks to grasp. But, I will try
to include and post as many Malabar recipes as possible in the future.

Today
I am going to share one such elaborated recipe that takes time, but well worth
the efforts. These kind of recipes are usually made in the Malabar Muslim
households usually as an evening snack and is a popular party dish. Malabar is known for its variety of
pathiri/pathal which are usually rice based pancakes, some stuffed, some
seasoned, some fried and then some just steamed. Really, the amount of recipes
that could be made of out rice is just not a handful or two; but several of
them, some of them which you would come across my blog too.

In
this post I am going to share you one of my favourite dishes, chemmeen pathal/chemmen pathiri. These
are rice pancakes stuffed with a spiced mixture of shrimps or prawns and
steamed usually in banana leaf placed in a steamer. This is like roti and curry
amalgamated into one single dish, just by stuffing the curry into the pancakes
and then steaming it. I had the similar version of this stuffed pathiri several
years back during one of the grand parties I attended back home and it is
actually prepared using fish rather than prawns. But prawns work very well here
and I suppose squid or mussels should work great as well if you can get hold of
them.

Chemmeen Pathiri/Pathal (Makes 12-14 medium size ones)

Ingredients:For the pathiri:

(Please
refer to the Neypathal
dough and options given there. You can prepare the dough in any of the method
mentioned there).

This is prepared in the same manner as my Fish pathiri, so check out that for a step by step pictorial illustration.Here is the link.

6. Add the chopped coriander leaves, cooked prawns, coconut, garam masala and
stir well, cook for a 8-10 minutes until all the flavours are well blended. Add
the fish pieces, cover and cook on very low flame until all the flavour is
infused well for about 8-10 minutes. Add more salt if needed and turn of the
heat.

For the making pathiris
and assembling:
1. Soak the rice in warm water for 3-4 hours or overnight.

2. Grind it along with minimal water until you get a coarse and grainy mixture.

3. Add coconut, fennel seeds and roughly chopped onions to this and grind for
few seconds until everything coarsely ground and not smooth.

4. Tip the whole mixture in to a large bowl, add salt and mix well.

5. Add the rice powder and mix well using hands until you get dough that can be
shaped into balls.

6. Divide the dough into 20 -24 portions and roll it into smooth spheres. Take
a portion of the rice dough and flatten
it on a sheet (I use baking paper or a clear shopper bag cut into square shape,
u can use banana leaf instead) using the heel and fingers of your palm. Add
some masala in the centre leaving 2 centimeters around the edge.

7. Make another pathiri on another sheet the same way and flip it over to the
pan cake with the prawn filling, covering the masala completely. Gently press
the edges using the fingers to seal all the masala in or use a fork to press
the edges and to give it a patterned egde. Carefully lift the sheet/banana leaf
and place it in a steamer. Steam cook for about 10-12 minutes or until the
pathiri is firm to touch. Wearing an oven mitt, hold all the edges of the
banana leaf/baking paper and lift out the Pathiris. (Be careful here as the
steam can burn your hands).

8. Make pathiris with rest of the dough and steam couple of them at a time.

Tips:

1.To make soft Pathiris, soak the rice in hot water
instead of cold/tap water. Use good quality rice.

2. For reheating, its always best to re-steam it to bring
back the softness.